The workers shifted one roof and built another.

My building has two roofs covering four distinct areas. The 24 x 48 RV garage and 12 x 48 shop share one roof while the 4-car garage and 1200 square foot living space above it share another.

Last week, the builders raised the roof over the RV garage section of the building. Next up was the extension of that roof over the shop area.

But first they had to shift the roof trusses 1 inch down. That was determined by the boss, who stopped by on Sunday to check.

Meanwhile, when I told the workers about how I’d wanted to use the Bobcat to move some gravel, they fixed me right up. They put the bucket on and left the engine running for me. After Angel told me how to release the parking break (duh-oh!), I proceeded to make two trips to the gravel pile, driving through the building to get there and back. I dumped the gravel near the helicopter’s temporary landing zone and used the bucket, to the best of my ability, to spread the gravel. Then I shut down, got out, and did it right with a rake.

Yep, that’s me driving the bobcat to fetch gravel.

Once the guys finished shifting the roof — which you can actually see in the time-lapse video below if you look very carefully — they went to work extending that roof out over the shop area.

The work went remarkably quick. They’re using hangers to hang all the beams — we have boxes and boxes of them all over the place here — and they have a hammer guns that make the work a lot easier (and quieter) than constantly banging with a hammer. These guys have obviously done this many times before.

While they worked, I went down to “lookout point” to paint my bench. It had come hidden away in my shed, painted with school colors — apparently orange and dark green; who thinks of these things? — and I wanted it a more sedate color that would blend in with my surroundings. That meant the same sage green I’ve been using for my beehives, which is very similar to the color of the chicken coop. (I sure hope I don’t get tired of that color.) At one point, I turned back to look at my building. It didn’t look so big from halfway to my property line.

The workers finished up on time — they always do; I’m beginning to think they pace themselves just right — and left for the day. Here’s the time-lapse, I’ve begun trimming them down to only include work done:

The roof is off by 1 inch.

I was very surprised on Sunday — Memorial Day Weekend, mind you — when Corey, the owner of the company building my new home, showed up in his truck with a new worker and the worker’s daughter. Corey told me that he thought there might be a 1-inch error and that he was there to make measurements and set up the work for the guys when they arrived on Tuesday. He was unable to come Tuesday because he had to be in Chelan to take delivery of some steel.

The word “error” put me on alert, but he didn’t seem too concerned. I let him do his measurements while the other guy helped him. I’d just finished work on my chicken coop and was doing odd jobs around the yard. The worker’s daughter, whose name I’ve forgotten, spent her time looking at the chickens and climbing some of the equipment.

I decided to replace the GFCI outlet on my temporary power pole. I’d never done anything like that before and although I was confident I could do it without any problems, there was something comforting about having people around in case I electrocuted myself.

The guys did their work, with Corey climbing the ladder multiple times while his other guy mostly watched and listened to what Corey told him. I got the feeling the worker was new and being trained. I really didn’t pay attention. After a week of construction guys on the property, I can pretty much tune anything out. Then he told me that there were two ways to fix the problem, which was minor. One way made a lot of extra work. The other way was to simply shift the trusses by one inch — which is what he was going to tell the crew to do on Tuesday.

Afterwards, he and his worker started looking through the piles of wood beams that had been stacked near the building. They found what they were looking for in the middle of the stack. And then they used the bobcat to rearrange the stack of beams.

This is exactly what I didn’t want to see. You see, they’d left the keys in the bobcat — which was really a Caterpillar Skid Steer Loader (with wheels instead of treads) — and I’d been eyeing it with the idea of using it to move some of the gravel around for dust control. I knew I’d be bringing my helicopter in soon and the ground beyond the grassy landing zone I’d prepped was about a foot thick with fine dust. When I landed, I’d create a dust cloud visible from space. I wanted to spread some of that gravel over the dust and I didn’t want to use a hand shovel to move it. The previous evening, I’d even climbed aboard and gotten it started. But when I realized I didn’t know how to drive it — it doesn’t drive the same as a Bobcat, which I had a tiny bit of experience with — I shut it down and turned to Google for help. I’d found a how-to article online that explained how it worked and planned to tackle the job later that day.

Trouble is, when they used it to move the beams around, they removed the bucket and attached the forklift. Then they moved some of the beams so they blocked the path back to the bucket. Even if I could figure out how to swap the two, I couldn’t drive to the bucket. (There was no way I’d try to use the forklift to move the beams.)

So there was no earth moving for me that weekend.

After laying out the beams for the other workers, they all climbed back into the truck and drove off. They’d been at the site less than three hours.

And yes, the time-lapse was running. Because they moved stuff around, I figured I’d make a movie. Nothing too exciting and it’s really short. You can see me working at the power pole, too.

Only a half day, but a lot done.

I was home on Thursday morning, mostly writing blog posts, when the workers put in about 4 hours of work.

They brought along a new piece of equipment — a man lift — and used that with a series of cables and pulleys to hoist each section of my RV garage roof into place. This isn’t the highest roof, but it’s likely the most cumbersome. It required hands-on participation from all four workers at once.

It took the man lift, four guys and a bunch of ladders to raise each roof section.

As one of my friends noted, the fully framed roof trusses looked a lot like bleachers when they sat on the ground. But once they were lifted into place over the building’s biggest open space — 24 x 48 feet — they started looking a lot more like a roof.

And the poles started looking a lot more like a building.

The first part of the roof is up.

It took the guys less than 4 hours to lift all four truss sections and secure them to the poles. Then Angel told me that they were needed at a job in Chelan and would be back on Tuesday. I gave them the box of cookies I’d bought them and they drove off.

Later that day, I met with Tanya in the office. I told her about the progress and we both agreed it was a good thing they hadn’t hit any rocks when digging the post holes. She said that the building should be done in 4 weeks. I was so stunned that I didn’t think to ask her whether she meant 4 weeks from the start date or 4 weeks from that day. Either way, it means I can finally get my things out of storage — likely before the end of June.

And that’s something to celebrate.

Here’s Thursday’s time-lapse: